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First Planted Tank

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As many of you are now aware I've been working on my 10 gallon apisto tank for the past few months. Both my female and male are doing well and seem to have stopped fighting, even occasionally showing off for one another!! I just recently decided to add plants due to outbreaks of algae and problems with nitrates. The plants I chose were water sprite, cryptocoryne wendtiis, red root floaters(courtesy of KevinVA), and when they're shipped next week a small batch of amazon frogbit. I wasn't originally going to get the frogbit or RRF but I've read on plenty of sights that both plants can survive in my light settings. I just today recieved my crypts that took 2 weeks to get here(luckily for me all arrived healthy with new shoots already growing, and even more lucky for me I received 8 plants instead of 3) and I just finished planting them. I, unfortunately, had to remove my apistos and Nerite Snails from the tank as I added another inch of gravel and I did not want to harm them in the process, hopefully they aren't too stressed. With all these changes I might just have to make a journal!!

Now comes my questions. I've been struggling with brown algae in my tank however I've cut down the amount of time the light is on to only about 10 hours. I've only been doing this for a couple days. Does anyone know how else I can rid myself of the algae? I also dosed Flourish for the first time today as my water sprite was doing poorly. Unfortunately I came home to discover my biggest stem covered in brown algae, however all the new growth is even brighter green and grew quite a bit just in this one day.. What should I do? The water sprite is brand new, only about a week old. I have three tiny daughter plants and two larger plants that only have about 4 stems each. I just want to get it so its a nice, thick, forest of water sprite. Also, just thought I might add, my substrate is entirely gravel. I have a root tab under the water sprite and I'm dosing Flourish. Should I add root tabs for the crypts as well?

Brown Algae feeds on something in the substrate. It goes away on its own once it has consumed all of the silicates or whatever it is that it eats. I think silicates is wrong... whatever. Someone will answer it.

Some people claim certain fish eat it... but I am skeptical. I think they might be waiting, getting tired of it, adding a fish, and then when it goes away naturally, the fish did it. But I could be wrong.

Diatoms can be eaten and are eaten by Otocinclus, especially. They love the stuff. Honestly, diatoms do not go away by themselves, naturally. You still need to manually remove it, otherwise it solidifies and wraps around stems, leaves, etc... which makes it more difficult to remove and nasty looking.

I've found that at least some root tabs (like Flourish) actually have silicates in them, which, in addition to many sand substrates, will aid in the creation of diatoms. I've experienced this, myself. I would be diatom free for weeks, then I'd add a flourish root tab and all of a sudden I'd have diatoms in my tank. It's not exactly the most horrible thing to happen, as it's somewhat easily removed and notable algae eaters love it.

The algae is seen mostly below the gravel line, on the walls of the tanks and the plants. What algae eating species could even work in a 10 gallon? The only thing that comes to my mind are otos and I've heard they're very prone to random deaths.

In good news all my crypts opened up overnight and have the first baby leaves out!!

I've had about 9 Otos in total and only 1 has died "randomly." He came with an illness from the store and literally died a day later. Otherwise, all of mine have been fine. Just make sure your water params are good and they have enough to eat. Otos are actually very good algae eaters and you can fit 3-4 in a 10gal comfortably, depending on your other stock. Otherwise, shrimp and nerite snails are also great algae eaters.

I can't really go with shrimp as I have a strong feeling my apistos would bully them and kill them. Maybe I could go with otos. Do you know of any really good places to order them online? I know of a few reputable sellers but usually the shipping is incredibly expensive (ex: LiveAquaria) I've heard otos need schools, is that true? My algae amounts aren't enormous, but I don't think I'd be able to sustain maybe more than 2 or 3.

The amount of algae you have is negligible. You can sustain Otos without any algae at all, so long as you feed them wafers, pellets or veggie substitutes regularly. They do best in schools of 4+, but I've kept them in a school of 3, which made them more comfortable in my 10gal. I now have 8 of them and they're fun to watch. =]

I got all of mine from Petsmart and they've been doing fine. I only had one odd death due to sickness. If you wanted to pay a premium ($9.99 for 3) for stock that's pretty much guaranteed to be pristine, you could go with Gunpowder Aquatics. They're a fish farm in FL and do an awesome job with shipping and packaging their fish. I got my 4 SAEs from them and getting 12 Black Ruby Barbs next week. Shipping is about $16 Priority, though.

Well crypts seem to be doing well, and the water sprite is sending out several new stems. I'm still having an algae issue so I went ahead and ordered a 3 pack of Otos from gunpowder aquatics. Hopefully the arrive within the week.